AWARD-WINNING chef James Sommerin has been taking advice from his 93-year-old grandmother as he tries to represent Wales in a TV cooking show.

Mr Sommerin, 30, the executive chef at The Crown at Whitebrook in Monmouthshire can this week be seen cooking to represent Wales in BBC2’s Great British Menu.

The Michelin-starred chef is appearing on the show every day this week, competing against fellow Welshman Stephen Terry from the Hardwick in Abergavenny, to represent Wales against chefs from around the UK.

The overall winner will cook a four-course banquet for 100 soldiers who’ve recently returned from Afghanistan.

The theme of this year’s competition is Taste of Home, where chefs were asked to design a menu fit for heroes.

Mr Sommerin, a father of two, originally from Caerleon, who lives in Pontypool with wife Louise, 29, and daughters Georgia, 10, and Angharad, six, said his grandmother, Eleanor, 93, was his biggest influence.

“When I was a child I would stay over and every Saturday we would cook for three to four hours,” he said.

“If I’m looking to use a classic ingredient I phone her up and ask how she would do it.”

He even used a sprig of lavender from her garden in the menu he put before judges Pru Leith, Oliver Peyton and Matt Fort, an experience he described as “like going to the headmaster’s office”.

His grandmother is not the only member of the family he turns to for advice.

“I try to design my food to please everybody, but it has to appeal to a woman,” he said. “It’s not masculine. If I give my wife a dish and she loves it, I know it’s spot-on.”

The final episode of the show on Friday will reveal whether his poached and roasted chicken with liquid ravioli; smoked eel with confit pigs’ trotters; loin of rabbit with wild mushroom baked custard and smoked butternut squash and summer fruit pudding impressed them enough to send him through to the next round.

He said: “I didn’t really know how to take the judges. I was completely baffled by Oliver. I found Pru the most daunting at first. I felt as if I wanted to impress her.”

Mr Sommerin says his appearance on the show has enabled him to fly the flag for Wales, showing off the quality of the food produced here.

“I wanted to be able to showcase fantastic Welsh produce but done in my own style,” he said. “I didn’t want to go down that whole typical Welsh style of food. I steered clear of laverbread and cockles. I wanted to focus on the more unusual products, to show there’s more to Wales.

“The food was quite modern and quirky and fun. It has to be fun. It’s your personality on a plate.”

The kitchen at the Crown, where he’s been since 2003, is a far cry from the mayhem viewers have experienced on TV’s Hell’s Kitchen. It’s a quietly busy team which operates under a regime of mutual respect and encouragement, whipping up fresh, local ingredients.

Mr Sommerin, who wanted to be a chef from the age of 12, takes his inspiration from seasonal, local ingredients, but he also thinks it’s important to get the message across about where our food comes from.

One show which meets with his approval is Channel Four’s controversial Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, which showed the cycle of an animal’s life, from farm to plate, showing their live slaughter.

“It’s important to see where an animal comes from and how humanely it is killed in this country,” he said.